WARFARE
WARFARE
UNDER FOR
12″
SEPTEMBER 1985
SAM (SAM20)
The Warfare single was the last release Martin Hall issued using the band name Under For. As the title suggests, the song is a fairly aggressive bulletin, an outburst reflecting the singer’s disappointment with the stagnated post-punk movement in the mid-eighties.
Warfare remains one of Hall’s personal favourite songs from the period. It was also his poorest selling single during the eighties.
1. Warfare (4:36)
2. Course (5:00)
WARFARE
In this media of mental translation
In this handicap of alienation
I need more than your model of motion
Than aesthetics of broken hearts
Here we are again
Feeling just the same
In these separate hells
Every word’s been said
Every lie’s been fed
To define ourselves
While your balance is kept intellectual
You’re emotionally ineffectual
A hysteria so perfectly tragic
So unreachable near
I’ve just had enough of neurotic love
Of this culturecide
I don’t need your shit
It just makes me sick
Look into my eyes
‘Cause this is the face
This is the race
COURSE
Free to force everything that you dare
Receive
Reinforce as you pass it along
The love that you give
Reflected through limits
Exceeding all further demands
In the mirrors
The frames
In the way that we are
I believe in our love
I believe in our right
As it spreads in my blood
As it runs through my veins
As it fills every gap in the structure I feel
And I need you so badly
I call out your name
In my whisper I hide every scream ever made
In the volume
The silence
The nights that we share
As the sweetest nothing
The background replaced
While feeding the surface
The course of our need slowly changing our lives
You take and you give
But still freezing each move
Forcing perspectives so gently
In this framework of time
In delay on delay
As we live through each bend
In return on return
In these portraits of feed-back
In tranquillized nerve
Only seen in a haze
But still viewed from within
And dissolving again
In these landscapes of you
In the cover of night
With the permanency of your hands
Of your skin cast like shadows on me
Tearing my soul apart
Flemming Nygaard: Cello
Martin Hall: Vocals, keyboards, violin
Nicolay Krogh: Bass
Per Hendrichsen: Guitar
Stine Hammarlund: Cello
Thomas Langballe: Drums
Design: Martin Hall
The track is included in the box set Catalogue from 2007 as well as on the compilation album Catalyst from 2008.
YEARS OF STRUGGLE AGAINST THE LIES, THE STUPIDITY AND THE COWARDICE
YEARS OF STRUGGLE AGAINST THE LIES, THE STUPIDITY AND THE COWARDICE
PESTEG DRED
MC
AUGUST 1985
ATLAS (#1)
The Pesteg Dred album Years of Struggle against the Lies, the Stupidity and the Cowardice was recorded by an 18-year-old Martin Hall alongside vocalist Inge Shannon and guitarist, noisemaker and co-producer Per Hendrichsen in December 1981. Due to economical hardship the title wasn’t released until the summer of 1985 where it featured as a bonus music cassette included in the first edition of the Danish art magazine Atlas.
In the autumn of 2010 a limited vinyl edition of Years of Struggle against the Lies, the Stupidity and the Cowardice was released in the United States, receiving great international acclaim. At the same time the album was released as a cd with the SS-Say 12”-single Fusion from 1985 added as bonus material under the title I Have Seen You through the Years, Worn by Different Faces (SS-Say also featured Inge Shannon on vocals).
1. Salt (4:14)
2. Untitled (Postcards and Reasons) (3:54)
3. Superior (4:21)
4. Impressions (5:01)
5. Light, More Light (11:23)
6. Untitled (5:51)
7. Almost (2:59)
“Martin Hall appears to be the figure who defined the Danish New Wave scene. We’ve never heard of any of Hall’s other projects, but if any were half as good as Pesteg Dred, they’d be worth the price of admission. Death disco? You bet!
Dark Entries scores yet again with a really great re-discovery on Pested Dred.“
Aquarius (November 2010)
“Industrial solitude pours forth in a haunted Kirlian Camera style work of lonesome isolation. The album progresses along sepulchral darkwave lines. Desperation cascades over angst, with vocals of Inge Shannon eclipsing all … I don’t know where Dark Entries scare up these obscurities, I only know I’m glad that they do.“
Igloo Magazine – Robbie Geoghegan (November 2010)
”Years of Struggleis a hitherto rarely heard album that exemplified the black-hole nihilism and hostile theatrics found in the abstractionist fractions of the post-punk movement. After this sole Pesteg Dred recording Hall formed a number of darkwave projects in Denmark with considerable aplomb, but the innovation coupled with the claustrophobia of Years of Struggle is so strong that I have to wonder where Pesteg Dred might have gone if they had had the opportunity back in the day.“
The Wire – Jim Haynes (January 2011)
“Uncompromising seriousness and unfettered urgency … It’s kinda easy to become blasé with so many ****wave reissues around, but this is simply one of the most essential we’ve stumbled upon.“
Boomkat (January 2011)
“Immerses you into another world immediately.”
Sideline Music Magazine (February 2011)
Inge Shannon: Vocals
Martin Hall: Drums, keyboards, piano, bass, cello, violin, percussion, autoharp
Per Hendrichsen: Treatments, keyboards, guitar
Design: Martin Hall
The original Pesteg Dred album was recorded at Karma, December 1981.
RELIEF
RELIEF
MARTIN HALL
LP
MAY 1985
SAM (SAM15)
The most requested album from Hall’s eighties catalogue has always been Relief, his first lp-release as a solo artist – an album on which he plays all instruments himself, from drums to string sections. The lp was originally released in the spring of 1985 and has topped most fan polls as the singer’s best album ever.
Relief didn’t appear In digital form before September 2009 where it was remastered and issued alongside Hall’s other grand electropop/rock record from the same period, Cutting Through (1986).
1. Eyes and Hands (5:11)
2. An Overture (4:58)
3. A Description of Patterns (4:49)
4. Network (3:56)
5. Resonance (5:55)
6. Word on Word (5:00)
7. Spiral (3:27)
8. As It Begins (5:45)
EYES AND HANDS
As I am
Changing in these filters of light
Without difference between the symbol and the force that is symbolized
Just like you
Scanning the shadows
I see you through nothing but eyes
Depending on eyes
As the sphere of wound strengthens the love
Earthbound to heaven but trapped in the mirrors
If self-made conditions rule perfectly blind
So selfish bourgeois
So vulgar pretentious in your attempted martyrdom
From sacrifice to power release
The strain keeps the balance of love
While it shines like a diamond
So dustless and unseen
Beyond tension and form
Feel it
Skinless
Take it in
In whirls of love
Through eyes and hands
A voice surrounds me
A touch reminds me
Equalizing every change
Again I lie down to die in your arms
Surrounded by the rings in the water
Beyond dividing life into senses in intellectual self-mutilation
In every circle knowing the centre
In every touch a signal so tender
All on the outside
All on the inside
Without distinction
From request to request
Hiding in the mirrors
In these laws of pain
In the identity of the pain
Drawing the lines between love and hatred
Based on code and revenge
Where’s your respect for love?
Where’s your respect for life?
Acting out neurotic non-appearance
Stimulating some denied desire by simulating a heart on fire
In worlds on location
In wordless betrayal
In the illusion of security
But there will be no restrictions
Nor any limits
For body and spirit
When love transcends
In both sense and symbol
Beyond good and evil
Beyond you and me
Cover me with your eyes
AN OVERTURE
There are no such concepts as “for” or “against”. Love is centreless, limitless, beyond any man-made black-versus-white terminology. Of course there has to be a reality based on the “love under will” principle but to regard this discipline as the final point could easily become just another counterphobia. There’s no truth to hide in, no lie to prosecute. We’re here all alone and every individual judges itself.
Pictures melting
Covering all senses
Marks the outline of your presence
And your whisper hits me like a scream
Of affection
Savage as death
As I lie by your side in the still of the night
The oblivion of all that’s ever been left behind me
Cut on cut
Lines on lines
The return from each bow
In a triangle move
From the nucleus to the final break
In this vacuum between how we think two-dimensional but sense three-dimensional, emotion and intellect are often considered as two ends in themselves. However, it seems to me that they’re just the two ground pillars over which the web of the spiritual reality can be woven. It’s like a black-and-white photography. You don’t see the black colour isolated from the white. You instantly perceive the colours united as the motive of the picture.
As I sense you in delayed impressions
Set in time by zigzag patterns
All relations synchronized with nearness
As the nature of fulfilment
And from stretch to relief
All I’ve seen
All I’ve done
Blow on blow
All untouched
Closer and closer in every turn
The eternity of every moment we share
And the perfect decay
Of the mornings
Of the waves of time
A DESCRIPTION OF PATTERNS
The claustrophobia
The haze of a thousand cigarettes
You talk about magic
But you can’t even change yourself
The self-destruction we used to worship
The perfect setting
If good it turned me on
If bad it tore me up
In mind made of steel
In value and sharing
Repressing your need
Feel it out
Get it out
Don’t you feel the lie?
The drug-confirmed doubt
An all-hate obedience in this aftertaste of impossible dreams
And every keyword
Every war fought for independence
Remember the details
Spread in circles to cover the wound
Structures of reality
Overtures of defeat
In love it brought you near
In fear it brought you to hell
Neanderthal ways and left behind dreams
A thousand more words just to emphasize another skin-deep announcement
The love that we shared
So brutally wasted
In line-ups of doubt and delusion
And question marks much too easily set
As we never gave ourselves completely
As questions defeated all answers too perfectly
Surrounded by walls
From level to level
From words to silence
From hate to love
I don’t regret anything that I’ve done
I just want to become what I am
NETWORK
Through the rupture to the surface
With the tissue of days laying soft over skin
As white on white
In this reverberation of love
The warmth comes in waves
Guided by nerve
Just like the air covering me
As the light reflects itself
In this change of scenery
A reunion takes its place
Transforming namelessly
Into crystal and cell
Into heaven and hell
Into all we’ve ever seen
Into all we’ve ever been
From word to matter
Silhouettes ensouled by the loss
In a vortex of skin
To the centre of the bindings
While you simulate love
The transcendence remains your trauma
As you think in 2D
Think in 3D
In this network
Words reinforced in their turn-back from the walls
And absorbing all your nearness
I breathe in every particle of you
And in memory of you
I’ll connect these worlds apart
I will find all that I need
In the mirror of your eyes
And be breathless by love
RESONANCE
Weakening over weakening
A fire that burns so brightly
Only a shadow cast by yourself
So soft and fading
Wind over body
Shaking each nerve
In curves of freedom
In the hardest care
A baptism in desire and in merciless grace
And in this fusion
Sister shadows compressed to the core
Difference on difference in every framing I make
In display on display
And again
Afterwards
In the beauty of all death
An ultimate reality
Double-lined from phase to phase
From the mother-wound to the scabelon
From one to zero in a circle of ten
Burning cities melt into sunset
The blue light
The white beds
The roaring shapes of love
From stone to skin
Forcing all life
Trapped in this outline
For you alone
This time for all we know
Like a shadow
I feel you near
In all these nights without you
Flickering
From dust to contour
Always there
From the centre to the line
Hermetically closed inside me
For you alone
This time for all we know
Shining through time
Sacred but still so raw
And all the love
Moving so motionless
And even now
As it always will be
In each overload
Affection running tenderly wild
Losing shadow in every move I make
In a flow of warmth
Like blood spreading in water
All alone
Surrounded by time
From displacement to displacement
And in the shadowplay of memory
Closing my eyes
And into the abyss of your love
Trapped inside the heavens of your touch
Felt like this a hundred times before
Still I only need it more and more
I will drink the salt stains from your skin
Kiss you clean from all the violence
Drugs, repression, fantasy and fear
All I need is just to feel you near
WORD ON WORD
I took every advantage
As I questioned your love
And took every precaution
In remembrance of my own ways
And the crush-up of time
Mirrored in question marks
So insensible real
Surrounded in drugs and wasted love
And again
As the dogma of death constitutes every movement I make
In a liberation too “fascist” for you
In a declaration understood by too few
Word on word
In this classic replay
In my face
All the limits of time
The pathology of the warfare we live
All the consequences of what we couldn’t give
Still you’ve given me everything you could
In each line thousand points
In each move thousand turns
Never ending
Nor beginning
No pretending
No regretting
Just a change too weak to notice
In these well-known patterns of the cause and effect
In these crimes of extension
Every loss still reflects the love
Ever-changing design hides the transparency
Of the presence we share
The transition in which we live
All the life, all the Golgotha moves
Burning proud
In the end burning out
I demand nothing
But I still need it all
In reversed arrangements of the rise and fall
And of course love is marked by the etch
But the core is revealed in the stretch
In robbed mind
Raped body
In the bloo it flows
All the life
All the light
In the ash it glows
All the light
Burning deep inside
And the pure brilliance in a tired glance
Clearing on clearing and life re-appearing
The free flow and the breakthrough
To dare the all-care
The matrix of every sense of “God”
SPIRAL
Time passes time
In the shadow of action
In its most pure form
From moment to moment
Changing all the time
Release me with the strongest bond
Eyes on eyes
Keeping me near
Taking me in
Just like a membrane all around me
Shine out
Release
Heal inside out
Let it pour directly
You made me forget
In shape, sound and figure
A retreat so perfect in every way
From death to resurrection
And the conditions reborn
Everything had to be this way
What we gave
What we shared
What we are
In emanation on emanation
Always in me
Kept in my heart for eternal time
You made me forget
AS IT BEGINS
How should I ever forget the moments?
The nights without sleep
The days of fever
And from genesis to this glimpse
Movement all flecked with horizon
Passing every line again
And nevermore the same
Walking into the light
And I remember each shadow set cast upon our bodies
Cooling burning skin in the colour slide of night
Force locked up in strain
A balance containing it all
The still waters run so deep
And nothing was denied us
In all-disappearance
Without any after image
I took what I needed and gave what I could
The never-ness we surrounded ourselves with
The reasons alone and the ways we took
Shapes left behind
Reflecting survival
Degrading and fading in endless perfection
How should I ever forget the ages?
The testaments of the masses out there
In this legend that we all live
Clothed in space and placed in time
But nevermore alone or distant
In these mandalas
In the freedom of love
An immemorial origin burning deep inside me
Once upon a time in a timelessness called now
And I wanted everything
Believed in every word
In love and sweat
In face and memory
And nothing was denied me
Into pyramid shape
Light on light in reflection
From essence to reality
Element to element
Light strokes flowing like a stream of gold
Breathing the air in this all-abundance
And while the sky breaks into sight
Revealing bones and metal
How should I ever …
All my life I’ve lived for one thing
I’ve been given everything
And while I move towards the centre
I recall it all
And nothing is denied me
And nothing will be denied me
Martin Hall: Vocals, instruments
Design: Martin Hall
Photo: Ken Rivad
Martin Hall played all instruments on Relief “live” in the recording studio. Despite the sound on the record, there was no drum programming involved. The album was recorded only a few months after his mother’s suicide and the process turned out to be the most challenging he had embarked upon so far in his career.
The grand, high-tech’ish sound on the Relief record, combined with its epic, fairly bombastic lyrical contents, made the album one of Martin Hall’s most popular releases during the eighties and secured the artist a cult following in countries such as Germany and the Netherlands.
A highlight on the album remains the track “Resonance”, a song written during a stay in Cairo in 1984.
FUSION
FUSION
SS-SAY
12″
FEBRUARY 1985
SAM (SAM10)
SS-Say made their live debut at the William S. Burroughs visit “Last Chance” in Copenhagen, Denmark, in October 1983. At this event the band featured vocalist Lena Walsh who was replaced by the new singer Inge Shannon during the spring of 1984.
The Fusion 12″ single was originally planned to be a full album but in the end two recordings were left out – one untitled track and the later Martin Hall recording “Deep Inside Me” featured on his 1986 album Cutting Through.
1. Transaction (7:45)
2. Care (4:48)
3. Fanfare (4:19)
TRANSACTION
You say you’ve tried
Well try harder
Change it
Re-arrange it
The turning point’s getting closer
I’m gonna take it where it comes from
I’m gonna give it to whom it belongs
Without delay
Take a chance now
Take it
Reinforce it
So make a move, make it happen
I’m gonna take it where it comes from
I’m gonna give it to whom it belongs
You say you’re sorry
Well you’d better learn to forgive yourself
‘Cause there’s no one here who can do it for you
In this twentieth century
Emotional sell-out
Be what you wanna be
Get out
Shout it out loud
You talk about a truth
Well it’s all an illusion
So what you have to do is to make your own fusion
Do what you wanna do
Be what you wanna be
Take what you wanna have
Just remember to give
I’m gonna take it
Moving slowly
Master planning of the means
Make it happen
Fight the limits you obey
Burning fire
Feel it as a part of you
Make it happen
Fight the limits you obey
You say it’s like all words are used up
Well I’m not
I’m standing right here
Look into my eyes
Take me by the hand
I will never let you down again
All together and no excuses
Turning every weakness to strength
CARE
Moments of love
Distant from darkness
Overturning the balance with the power of doubt
Caring for the first time
See you for the first time
Feel you for the first time
Need you for the first time
Don’t you recognize yourself in the mirror?
Far too involved to cancel the care
The nameless games and the real thing
The final solution and emotional stunts
Viewing for the first time
Value for the second
I have seen you through the years worn by different faces
FANFARE
Come on
Come on
Come on
Let it shine on you
Knowing what I feel
Knowing I’m able to give
Knowing what I need
Willing to risk all my love
Henrik Möll: Bass
Inge Shannon: Vocals
Martin Hall: Vocals, drums, keyboards, piano, guitar, tapes, percussion
Design: Martin Hall
Inge Shannon and Martin Hall had previously worked together in the cult project Pesteg Dred back in 1981. Alongside third member Per Hendrichsen the group recorded Years of Struggle against the Lies, the Stupidity and the Cowardice, an album that wasn’t released at the time due to financial hardship. In 1985, however, the title was released as a bonus music cassette in 1985 with Danish art magazine Atlas #1. Furthermore a limited vinyl edition of the album was released in the United States in 2010, receiving great international acclaim.
During the years SS-Say’s reputation has grown far beyond its native origins. Particularly the track “Care” has become an underground club classic in both Europe and in the United States – apparently because a French DJ kept playing it at the New York club The Batcave during the 90’s. In 2011 the song was featured as the opening track on the American Minimal Wave compilation lp and cd The Hidden Tapes.
THE IDENTITY OF ALIENATION
THE IDENTITY OF ALIENATION
MARTIN HALL
PROSE
NOVEMBER 1984
BORGENS FORLAG (ISBN 9788741872360)
The Identity of Alienation (“Fremmedgørelsens identitet”) is Martin Hall’s second book, a release that followed the style and themes of his appraised debut.
The author’s stream of consciousness technique combined with the book’s critical reflections on contemporary culture only added to the controversial image of Hall as an uncompromising and anything but obliging young artist speaking the language of a new generation.
Like Hall’s debut, The Identity of Alienation was illustrated by himself and released concurrently with the record Free-Force Structure.
Genre: Prose
Pages: 136 (illustrated)
Design: Martin Hall
“To all the living out there. About high/idea/equality. A touch that transforms everything into what it has always been.”
FREE-FORCE STRUCTURE
FREE-FORCE STRUCTURE
UNDER FOR
12″
OCTOBER 1984
SAM (SAM05)
Free-Force Structure is a 12″ single released by Under For. It was Martin Hall’s first record entirely based on drum machines and keyboards. The single presented a lighter sound than his earlier material and the track has become a classic dance track in various European goth clubs. The song has also been included on several international compilation albums.
At the time of its release Free-Force Structure received positive coverage in New Musical Express.
1. Free-Force Structure (6:41)
2. An Ending (7:02)
FREE-FORCE STRUCTURE
Forever hidden in the profile
The either-or behind the both-and
Transcend and ascend in the moment that frees
All loving fucked up in tension
Without shadow and without motion
A word like heart
A word like fire
I believe with my body
Believe with my soul
Believe in the eyes before me
Approach and regain
Life repressed to myth
Changing once again
Words sealed with a kiss
Cancel all the pain in these fantasies of realities
Let the fragments shine
Feel me deep within
Let the nearness bind
Feel me skin to skin
Let your flesh and mind fuse to the same thing
Rising from decline
Get up
Reach out
Confront
Break through
Re-set reality
Programme your love
All must pass but presence remains
The basic concepts, the further lies
Of the rituals built on your ism of truth
In this chain reaction set-out
We’re born alone but still I need you
So please don’t hide in self-hate and compromises
Between a desire to be free
And passion made of confinement
Martin Hall: Vocals, keyboards, guitar, programming
Per Hendrichsen: Treatments
Recorded and mixed at Custom Sound, summer 1984. Engineered by Peter Grønbæk.
Design: Martin Hall
The B-side, “An Ending”, represents the absolute opposite to the danceable title track. This recording was made during Under For’s infamous concert performance at The ISCM World Music Days at Aarhus Musikhus in October 1983 and is a piece of sheer sound terror. The full concert has later been made available as bonus material on the 2009 rerelease of Under For’s Apparently All the Same album from 1984.
APPARENTLY ALL THE SAME
APPARENTLY ALL THE SAME
UNDER FOR
LP
MAY 1984
SAM (SAMLP01)
Apparently All the Same was the only album released with Under For. The title remains one of Martin Hall’s most significant releases during the eighties, a monolith of sound reflecting the melancholic zeitgeist of the era.
The album was one of the few Scandinavian releases given positive coverage in British music magazines such as New Musical Express and Sounds at the time of its release.
1 Imagine Focus (5:12)
2. Meanwhile (6:45)
3. Form (6:17)
4. Theme Remains Theme (5:50)
5. Less (5:00)
6. In the Prism of Evil (7:25)
IMAGINE FOCUS
Just a touch of lost
Burning as always
As it was, as it is
And eventually
Just in trust, nothing more
So suddenly
From beginning to end
While this centreless present reflects itself
In inverted moves of an obsessional stage
In a stream of light from unreachable marks
Something long ago in everlasting terms
In a crossfade of untitled reasons
What it turned out to be
And occasionally
Everything in my hands
So totally
In the heat of the touch
Like the way we were
Beyond love under will
Suddenly away in these only words
By mistakes again into changing links
In this compromise of dependence then
Stage by stage, in exposure
Still so timeless in this life release
Nearness hidden in casual moves
Watch the changes and recall
Touch through another focus
Mark perfection twice
With or without purpose
Still tons against tons
Carefully mistaken in retrospective fear
Restrain it all while I imagine focus
MEANWHILE
While origin thins and narcosis thickens
It’s so easy to be mistaken
Now and then so absolute
When I phase out in light
While I synchronize reality and drug
In just another move of make-believe
With life in close-ups, so deliriously true
But only allusions to help me
In this concept of illusion
Cool, shining, clear
FORM
Apparently all the same
Like never before
Hidden in the contrast
The distance, the pulse, the reflection
Such awareness in every move
The nearer the source, the purer the stream
Direct to the centre
Remember the thin lines
Why regret what something became
We’re all “fascists” anyway
So much earlier
In these ages
This fetish of time
The making of the swastika
The titles of the symbols
The force, the form, the love as the core
I need the power of understanding
I need the power
In bleached vision
Find it all again
But no nearer than the touch allows
And inside time, in the media
All weaved in days
The patterns seem so unreal
One single point where it all lies
THEME REMAINS THEME
Just like the trademark of nowhere
So careless, so tender
Please don’t forget it, but don’t mark your life by remembering
Crossing the past in these present decisions all the time
Failing to master the techniques of knowledge in my own life
And in this metamorphosis of love
Every breath I take contains it all, but remains formless in this life-synthesis
Once belief weaved me in the finest stuff I have ever known
But now the touch feels so graceless in this chemistry of fear
From the love
LESS
No longer there
In mantras of anaesthesia, as a sacrifice of these methods
Gone, but not forgotten
Hidden in the parallels
So deep within the doubt, in these shapes of hatred
From circle into circle
In the touch that never ends
In beginnings
So tenderly aware, in cover of dreams
In endless sequences beyond all the love
Just like nothing has changed, a moment ago
In the glow that deepens all shadows
Touching the light for the first time
The last time
IN THE PRISM OF EVIL
Another burst of desire in the privilege of a dying race
In this concept of fear, this misguided potential
The emotional anonymity reflects itself in vision, document and word
In this conjectured freedom, this intellectual pornography
It’s yours forever
It has been written and you’re the only one to know
In this framework of prostitution
Cynicism and self-hate intensify the emotional fascism
The one-dimensional sexuality of this culture
A survival that makes life historical but dimensions alone
In these sacred words of form
In this devaluation of the enigma
And while love crystallizes in the outline of the focus
In the diagrams of the scars
In the libido of death
This associated reality marks the difference
Between the soul and the language
Between the art and the artificial
After two thousand years of misunderstood Christianity
Into this final phase, the trauma of dualism
Where the dream of the free will becomes the torture of freedom
Where the taboo of fear becomes the monopoly of death
This is the art of desire
The art of decline
Understanding is decay
The terminal disease
The end of evolution
It makes me …
Berit Spælling: Harp
Lena Walsh: Harmony vocals
Martin Hall: Vocals, drums, keyboards, bass, violin, tapes, horns
Michael Karshøj: Drums
Per Hendrichsen: Treatments, guitar
Design: Martin Hall
Apparently All the Same is recorded and mixed at Easy Sound Studios throughout January and February 1984. The mix was assisted by Freddy Frank. The album is written and produced by Martin Hall.
The 25th anniversary rerelease of the album in 2009 also contains the group’s infamous concert at The ISCM World Music Days in October 1983 – a violently noisy performance that stands in strong contrasy to the more rounded album.
GOD & GRAMMAR
GOD & GRAMMAR
ANTHOLOGY
MAY 1984
FORLAGET GUD & GRAMMATIK (ISBN 87-981633-0-2)
God & Grammar was an exhibition at Charlottenborg in May 1984. Towards this end a catalogue featuring the works of a number of the involved artists was released.
Among the contributors you’ll find artists such as Michael Kvium, Christian Lemmerz, Nina Steen-Knudsen, Christian Skeel, Peter Bonde, Henrik S. Holck, Lars Dan, Jette Debois, Eva Öhrling, Poul Jupont, Knud Odde, Morten Skriver, Lillian Polack, Lars Mathisen, Milena Bonifacini, Elmer and Martin Hall.
The catalogue was designed by K Grafik. The bottom collage is Hall’s contribution to it.
PEARLS BEFORE SWINE
PEARLS BEFORE SWINE
ANTHOLOGY
DECEMBER 1983
BORGENS FORLAG (ISBN 87-981555-0-4)
Shortly after his literary debut with The Reconstruction Is Greater Martin Hall was invited to participate in the anthology Pearls before Swine, a book released in December 1983. Hall’s contribution to the anthology is the text “Uden Titel” (“Untitled”).
Pearls before Swine was published in 400 copies in relation to a Danish exhibition called Tale og Tavshed (Speech and Silence) at Galleri Sct. Agnes running from the 15th of December 1983 until the 10th of January 1984. The anthology was edited by Jan Wolff.
The book opens with the following quotations: ”Alles Geschriebenes ist Schweinerei” (G. Baselitz) and ”When one realizes the psychic basis of the artist, one is repelled” (T.W. Adorno).
Apart from several illustrations made by Danish painters such as Knud Odde and Lars Ravn, the writings in the book contain pieces by Gertrude Stein and Asger Jorn as well as new material supplied by Peter Laugesen, Peter H. Olesen, Claus Carstensen, Odd Bjertnaes, T.S. Hoeg and several others.
INSKRIPTION
INSKRIPTION
MARTIN HALL
MC
OCTOBER 1983
KONG (KONG1)
Transmitted live on National Danish Radio on the 5th of September 1983, Inskription was a scandalous, soon to become legendary event performed by a 20-year-old Martin Hall.
A month after the event the transmission was released as a music cassette in relation to the first edition of KONG, a Danish art magazine. 20 years later the concert was released in a remastered cd edition.
1. Introduction by Ingolf Gabold (3:25)
2. Inskription (A) (4:55)
3. Inskription (B) (4:48)
4. Inskription (C) (2:44)
5. Inskription (D) (4:06)
6. Inskription (E) (6:33)
7. Inskription (F) (1:20)
8. Inskription (G) (2:56)
9. Inskription (H) (7:35)
10. Inskription (I) (4:31)
11. Applaus (0:40)
Martin Hall: Vocals, modular systems, echo machines, violin, tapes
Design: K Grafik
The performance took place in the concert hall of the National Danish Radio in relation to the National Fund for the Endowment of The Arts’ yearly grants to new Danish talents. Martin Hall was as one of the four recipients invited to perform at the occasion. Being given the grant for his work in the field of experimental electro-acoustic music, the young composer shocked the audience completely by generating a noise level never before heard on the premises. When the Danish newspaper Information (The Danish equivalent to The Independent) reviewed the concert a few days later, the headline simply ran: “Sound spanking”.
In 2003 – 20 years after the night of the concert – the recording was released in a remastered cd-version receiving much critical appraisal. This edition of Inskription was released by Panoptikon in cooperation with the National Danish Radio and contains several essays and articles about the event. Henrik Marstal, author of an acclaimed Danish book on the development of electronic music, Filtreringer (2001), writes about the work in relation to its classical connections, whereas Steffen B. Pedersen from the Danish electronic music magazine Geiger writes about its relation to the rock and industrial genres. You can read a translation of the latter article here:
